


Five Times John Saw Sherlock's Wand

by suitesamba



Series: The Wand Series [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Crossover, First Time, Harry Potter - Freeform, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Potterlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 04:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4990192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Sherlock hid his wand from John, and two times he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times John Saw Sherlock's Wand

**Author's Note:**

> A short Potterlock, which, if all goes as planned, will be Part 1 of a new Potterlock series. John is decidedly not magical, Sherlock is, but Sherlock operates on the fringes of the magical world, too married to reason and science to fully embrace wizardry, except when it comes to protecting John.
> 
> The story follows canon events in Sherlock (BBC), with a few minor details changed.

The first time John sees Sherlock’s wand, he is tied up and thrown into a corner of an abandoned factory in Manchester. He’s taken a hard blow to his head, and someone has drugged him, so later, when he thinks about it, he realizes he was imagining things. In his foggy mind, he remembers Sherlock crouching over him, patting his cheek, trying to wake him. He remembers blinking against the sudden light in the room, and Sherlock rubbing his wrists – oddly, no longer bound – to help restore circulation. Strange that he had a piece of wood in his coat sleeve, a pointy stick, of dark wood, worn and irregular. He tucks it away efficiently when he notices John looking at it, without apology or explanation.

He’d wonder, later, how Sherlock broke into the guarded room. He overheard him arguing in the corridor with Mycroft while the medics from the ambulance crew worked on him. “Guy must be a wizard with knots,” one of them said, holding up a length of uncut rope. But he doesn’t trust any of those memories, none except the look of relief in Sherlock’s eyes as he spoke to John from far away, and rubbed his wrists, and held his shoulders while he lifted a fine china teacup to his lips and offered him small sips of water. 

Water.

And that’s odd too, because who crashes into a crime scene with a teacup full of water?

He’s imagined it. He was concussed, after all, and severely dehydrated. He’d been kept in utter darkness for eighteen hours. Still, it plagues him, this slender piece of wood, for all that it seemed intentional, organic, as much a part of Sherlock as the Belstaff or the violin. He doesn’t ask Sherlock about it – for Sherlock has already given him a puzzled smile when he asked about the water in the fine teacup, and the uncut rope that had bound his hands together, and what he’d heard Anderson and Donovan discussing – the two door guards down in front of the inexplicably unlocked door. They don’t think Sherlock is some sort of super hero – they think he is strangely obsessed with John Watson and will move mountains to get to him.

Maybe he will. Maybe he does. But that doesn’t give him super human strength, or the ability to untie the kind of knots that secured John’s wrists. 

And even a barmy Sherlock doesn’t carry teacups in his pocket.

ooOOOoo

The second time John sees Sherlock’s wand, he has managed to surprise Sherlock in the flat by creeping up the stairs, hugging the walls, while Mrs. Hudson is hoovering the entryway. Sherlock has been texting him incessantly at work. He’s in one of his moods, and he won’t be pacified until John is home and he can conduct some sort of ridiculous experiment which, John has been informed, will involve positioning him in some ludicrous pose and measuring his joint flexibility after remaining still for four hours.

He has texted Sherlock back exactly twelve times.

_No._

_Absolutely not._

_I’m at work, you do realize?_

_No._

_No._

_No._

_Stop texting me._

_I’ll be home at six. But still no._

_STOP TEXTING ME!_

_No. And I’m turning this thing off._

_NO I WILL NOT GET MILK ON THE WAY HOME!_

_I’m REALLY turning this thing off now._

A full hour before the end of his shift, they’d asked if anyone wanted to leave early as the patient load was particularly light. He’d volunteered, already planning his revenge.

He’d surprised Sherlock anyway - enough so that Sherlock had leapt to his feet, arm ramrod straight, pointing at John with – what? Sherlock dropped his arm as soon as he recognized John, and the thing – whatever it was – disappeared. But John had seen it – that same bit of dark-coloured wood, smooth, worn. Definitely not a stick, then –but what?

It’s gone in a blink, and Sherlock is berating him for putting himself in obvious danger by surprising an armed man (armed with what?) but when John opens his mouth to challenge him, he suddenly remembers he’s forgotten to pick up the milk, and leaves (with apologies) to complete his neglected errand.

ooOOOoo

The third time John sees Sherlock’s wand, he doesn’t so much see it as feel it. He realizes, later, that there is a joke in there somewhere, but he’s too perplexed, too torn, to turn his mind that way. The media is tearing Sherlock apart, the Yard is not to be trusted, Sherlock is half mad with all of it and John can’t think straight. Sherlock has locked himself in his room – again – and John wants to kick in the door. He knocks things around in the kitchen instead, and pours scotch in a half-clean glass and collapses on the sofa.

Sherlock’s coat is here – lying where Sherlock tossed it not five minutes ago. It’s in John’s way, and he pulls it over toward him, and feels something in one of the inside pockets. Long and thin and hard, nine inches, perhaps or ten. He traces it through the fabric lining – slightly irregular, wider at the base and more narrow at the tip, but sculpted, or grooved – he can’t quite tell with this cursory examination.

He reaches into the pocket, pausing to listen for any movement in the flat, but he feels nothing. A hidden pocket, perhaps? He roots around, looking for a pocket inside the pocket, but all is solid and unyielding. 

The front then. He can feel the thing still – easily trace its shape – but there is absolutely no way to access the thing from the front. 

Or the back.

Is it sewn inside permanently? No – impossible. He’s _seen_ it, hasn’t he?

He’s re-examining the lining of the interior pocket when Sherlock bursts from his room, strides over to the sofa, takes his coat from a startled John, and returns to his room without comment.

John is left there, staring, mouth open. 

He is on his feet before the door slams shut.

“Sherlock! I was…”

He trails off.

He was what? 

Three days later, Sherlock jumps from the roof of St. Bart’s hospital. 

John does not see Sherlock’s wand again for a very long time.

ooOOOoo

The fourth time John sees Sherlock’s wand, he is bending over Sherlock’s fallen body, pressing two hands against the bleeding chest while he waits – desperately – for help to arrive.

Sherlock is trying to talk, trying to tell John something, and he raises his hand and grasps John’s wrist, drags the hand to his pocket and gasps out _wand_.

John fumbles – but tries to comply. He extracts a slim and strong length of carved wood, worn smooth, dark in colour, ten inches long. It drops into his hand like magic, and Sherlock’s hand covers John’s on the hilt. He stares into John’s befuddled, terrified eyes, stares right through them into his soul, and whispers two words.

“Expecto Patronum.”

A warm wind rises around them as a burst of bright light erupts from the tip of the wand, and, in a blinding flash, a form John cannot name tears through the office wall.

It is all John can do to keep his hands on the wound, to keep the pressure steady. In the face of the impossible, he focuses on what he knows to be real. Sherlock, his blood, his body, here beneath his fingers, breathing, struggling, eyes open, locked with his own.

And suddenly, they are not alone. Mycroft Holmes drops onto the floor beside John, places a champagne cork on Sherlock’s chest, guides John’s finger to it, and commands “Hold on.”

The floor drops out from beneath them as they are tossed into a jet stream of wind and colour. John can’t think, can’t see, can’t do anything but keep his finger on the bloody champagne cork until they fall through a portal into a place that is not St. Bart’s where medics in lime-green robes whisk Sherlock away while Mycroft pries Sherlock’s wand from John’s frozen hands then presses him down into a chair. He uses the wand, then, pointing it at John and saying “Scourgify” in a commanding sort of voice. Sherlock’s blood disappears from John’s skin and clothing. Later, John will think this neat little trick explains a lot about Sherlock’s always meticulous appearance, but now he stares at his fingers, flexes them, and looks up at Mycroft in wonder. He can definitively say it’s the first time he’s ever regarded Mycroft Holmes in that way.

“Welcome to St. Mungo’s,” Mycroft says, sinking into a chair beside John. “Get comfortable – I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

ooOOOoo

The fifth time John sees Sherlock’s wand, it is lying on the table beside his bed in 221B. Sherlock recovered quickly at St. Mungo’s, and John spent the weeks of Sherlock’s hospitalization beginning to unravel his life with Mary. A formal separation, broaching the subject of custody for their unborn child, packing and moving in with Harry until he could get things sorted once and for all.

He quits his job at the surgery and picks up more locum work. Twice, Mycroft is waiting for him outside his workplace at the end of his shift, and he slides into the black car for a fascinating immersion in the underbelly of the magical world in the heart of London. He would believe none of it save the evidence in his face – and Mycroft’s small demonstrations, more than mere parlour tricks. Everything slots together when magic is considered, most especially the jump from the roof of St. Bart’s, and John isn’t sure when he’ll forgive Sherlock, or when he’ll forget, but he is glad to know it all now, even though the knowledge is overwhelming, and the secret – that he has vowed to keep under threat of something ominous called Obliviation – will forever be heavy on his mind.

The second time he finds Mycroft waiting for him, they drive around London while Mycroft tells him about Sherlock, who skirts the edges of the magical world, who carries a wand but doesn’t use magic unless there is no other way. Too proud, perhaps, too attached to science, to observation, to using his brain instead of his innate magical talent to solve problems. 

Sherlock comes ‘round to Harry’s a month after John leaves Mary, and they walk together in the park, and get coffee, and sit together on a bench. John thinks Sherlock is very lucky to be alive, and very lucky to have had magic to help assure his survival. He also thinks him more fragile than ever before, more vulnerable, more human. Something happens to a man when he holds another’s life beneath his palms, when he’s on the cusp of losing something he didn’t quite know he had. 

This time, they don’t talk about magic, or the wand, or the Patronus that Sherlock conjured with those near-final, pained breaths. Mycroft has told him of the spell, and how it requires the happiest of memories, and expressed incredulity that Sherlock was able to conjure it in those conditions. But John remembers how Sherlock’s eyes were locked on his, and remembers the spark of joy through all the desperation. They don’t talk about Mary – they all know now who shot Sherlock and he has already made his decision. 

Instead, they talk about a case Sherlock has just taken up, one where no one is in danger, and time is not of the essence. And they talk about John’s sister, and how long John can stay with her. And they talk about the baby, and how the hell it can possibly fit into John’s life, and Sherlock doesn’t ask if Mary will be a good mother, and whether she can be trusted with a child. There are months ahead of them still, and John is grappling with other things now.

That week, Sherlock starts texting him again.

A week later, he is waiting outside the surgery when John leaves, and he wonders if John is hungry. John’s hungry, but he doubts that Sherlock is, but they go to eat anyway, and there’s a football game on in the pub, and Sherlock pretends to be interested and that makes John laugh, and he leads Sherlock down another road –deducing the players – and that’s a hell of a lot more fun than having Sherlock stumble over players’ names and rules and moves, though those things, admittedly, make John smile as well.

Midweek, Sherlock comments on a very old blog post, and he’s logged on as a guest, but John knows it’s Sherlock, and responds in kind. It’s rather like a secret correspondence, though they both know the other knows who Sherlock really is, and the posts are public, so they have to be clever and a bit sneaky with their answers. John insults Sherlock’s intelligence and the claws come out.

It’s fun, and he finds himself checking the blog from his mobile over breaks, and after work he heads to 221B unannounced and they go to Angelo’s and talk about the anonymous blog posts as if neither knows what the other’s part in it is. John likes the way this makes him feel, and it takes almost no time for him to equate the feeling to those early butterflies with Mary, and every woman he’d ever thought he’d loved.

He tucks the feeling away as best he can and looks up again at Sherlock, and catches him looking at him. They both look back at their food and the moment passes.

But there are other moments on other days, and more dinners at Angelo’s and elsewhere, and it feels a lot like dating, but it’s _not_ dating, John reminds himself. Odd that he has to go to that length – to remind himself that Sherlock is not…that. Cannot be.

It all leads up to a colossal argument in front of 221B. They’re out on cases again together, and it’s like old times, except that John is still at Harry’s, and Sherlock wants – no, he _needs_ \- John to move back in, but John isn’t sure, and there are months and months yet before the obligatory year is out and the divorce is final. And besides, there’s a baby coming. Sherlock says 221B is perfectly fine for a baby, because babies are small and take up only a very small amount of room. And John looks at him incredulously and starts to laugh. He’s laughing so hard he can hardly breathe, and for some reason, Sherlock doesn’t see the humour and join in. Instead, he storms inside and John chases after him. 

When John catches him at the bottom of the stairs, grabbing the belt of his coat and jerking him back, Sherlock whirls around, grabs John by the shoulders, and kisses him.

Sherlock is not an experienced kisser, but he is passionate about nearly everything he does, and no less so about kissing. John is kissing him back long before his brain fully engages, and somehow his hands are in Sherlock’s hair and he is pressed up against the wall. John groans when Sherlock leans against him, and Sherlock backs suddenly away, wide-eyed, stammering out an apology. He attempts escape again, climbing the stairs three at a time, but John is right behind him and tackles him just inside the door.

From there, it’s a quick slide past the point of no return, and they sleep together on Sherlock’s bed in a tangle of limbs and expensive sheets. And when John opens his eyes to the grey morning light, he sees Sherlock’s wand on the bed stand, placed atop his mobile, looking like it belongs there, and always has, a casual addition to a bedside pocket collection. 

John stares at the wand curiously. Mycroft has told him all about wands, how important they are to a witch or wizard, how central to their magical identity. Sherlock rarely uses his, but always carries it, and there it is – overwhelming evidence that Sherlock has had his back as much as John has had his. Over the years, John will have many aha moments when it comes to Sherlock and magic – like how cabs always stop when he lifts a finger, or how he’s always losing his keys but never gets locked out of the flat – but they’ll never make Sherlock any less brilliant in his eyes. 

Behind him, Sherlock stirs, then presses a sleepy kiss to the back of his neck. 

“Morning,” he mumbles, and the raspy scrape of his stubbled chin against John’s skin is absolutely foreign and unbelievably erotic. 

John takes one last look at the elegant length of worn mahogany, then rolls over, and embraces his future. 

_End Part 1_


End file.
